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Celebration of 
Abraham Lincoln's Birthday 



anc 



Second Anniversary of Institution 

of 

General James Shields Council No. 967 
Knights of Columbus 

Congress Hall, West Congress and Honore Streets, 
Chicago, 111. 

Tuesday, February 12, 1907, at 8 P. M. 



Address 

of the 

' Hon^ Peter S. Grosscup 

Judge of U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals 
on 

"Abraham Lincoln 



p- 






i i iKoin 



PROGRAMME 



ADDRESS OF WELCOME .' - Dr. Eugene G. Clancy 
t Grand Knight, GeneraJ.James Shields Council 

ADDRESS OF CHAIRMAN - - Anthony Czarnecki 
Lecturer, General James Shields Council 

VOCAL SOLO ! l~^^^^' ^°"f.7,^'"''''' 
( b — Absence — Wilkins 

Miss Eleonore Elliott, Soprano 

Piano Accompaniment, John A. Hedgecoxe 

READING— Edwin Markham's "Lincoln the Man of the People" 

Miss Josephine McGarry 

ADDRESS — "Abraham Lincoln" - Hon. Peter S. Grosscup 
Judge of U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals 



^. ft. OaJajcca- 



7Uli6 




Mk. CllAlKMAX, La 



l.Al>lES 

vjrars si 



AND Gentle m v. x 



It is only two vj?&rs short of a century now, since Lincoln was 
born. It is almost forty-two years since he died. In that time he 
lived the most conspicuous and the most useful life, barring, per- 
haps, the Father of his Country, of any secular American. 

If I tried, I could only elaborate upon the beautiful sketch 
of him given this evening in Markham's poem, "The Man of the 
People" ; the man who born out of the red earth ; who mixed 
with that earth the laughter as well as the pathos of humanity : 
and who lived under a commission from the Almighty, that this 
country miglit at its critical ])eriod meet fully and justly its re- 
sponsibilities. 

He was born in Kentuck}- — in the little hill country in Ken- 
tucky — and he lived there until he had almost grown into young 
manhood. It was a wise providence that he was born among a 
slave-holding people. Then, as now, men were so constituted 
that they could not see the justice of the other man's point of 
view. The north particularly — the New England north — could 
not understand how there could be any humanity in the slave- 
liolder, or how the slave himself could be anything else than a 
brutalized, unfortunate human being. 

On the other hand, the slave-holder of the south looked upon 
the northern New Englander and northern abolitionist as an in- 
termeddler. He could not understand how there could be such 
fanaticism, such narrowness, such a failure to comj^rehend other 
people's point of view, as was exhibited by (jarrison and Love- 
joy, and other men who represented the abolition cause. 

God ap])ointed Lincoln to be born among the slaves, and with 
the slave-holders, in one of the border states between the north 
and the south, that when the supreme moment of his life, and the 
supreme moment of the national life came, he might have the 
comprehension, ncit simply from the point of view of the hills of 
New England, but from the point of view of the hills of Kcntuckv 
and Tennessee, and the rice fields and the cotton plantations of 
South Carolina and Georgia as well. 

Lincoln came as a young man to Indiana, and there met that 
throbbing young pioneer life of Americanism that had just 
crossed the Alleghenies. and was plodding over the Mississippi 
Valley : and from Indiana he came into our own plains here of 
Illinois : leading until he was fifty years of age, or nearly fifty 
years of age, an inconspicuous life — almost an obscure life. 
Known by his lawyer friends as a keen, shrewd practitioner at the 
bar ; appreciated by his ])arty as a local leader of great shrewd- 



4%, ''\, ' Address of Hon. Peter S. Grosscup 

ness' ana^nsi'ght ; but unknown to the country — not having re- 
vealed, until the great campaign between him and Douglas, the 
pathos in character and mastery of minds that afterwards made 
him the great American. 

At fifty-one he was elected President of the United States, 
and at fifty-six was dead. 

I wish, before I refer to the consequences of this great life 
on the moral, intellectual, and material welfare of this country — 
I wish, if I can, to portray some of the qualities of the man — the 
qualities with which he came equipped — the tools, the garments 
that he was given, that his leadership might not simply be su- 
preme, but that it might be successful as well ; and not simply 
successful in the sense of having achieved a brute success, but 
successful in the sense of having established his cause upon the 
high altitudes of universal justice; so that Lincoln to-night stands 
one of the great figures of the universe. 

Not very long ago I found myself in California, camping 
among the hills of the south Nevada Range. All about me were 
the hills. After awhile I broke up camp and made towards the 
coast. The little hills, that looked great while I was at the foot 
of them, began to flatten out and sink ; and behind them a range 
of mountains appeared; and I realized that in some way, the 
greater elevations had been obscured by the less — those that were 
closer to me. I moved on towards the coast. In a little while, 
even this range of mountains began to flatten out, and behind 
them, at a distance I could not measure, rose the splendid peaks, 
white capped, and glistening against the eastern sky. One, two, 
three, four, five ; and the further I went the smaller the hills, and 
the smaller the mountains, but the higher the peaks. 

Lincoln along with Washington, and with a few others of the 
world's history, are those splendid peaks of history, glistening 
in the morning sunlight with the purity of his life, and looking 
down upon the wdiole world, himself one of the most conspicuous 
figures of the world. (Applause.) 

Let us see, then, w-hat were the qualities, what were some of 
the personal equalities, that made him this great figure. 

In American politics, one of the great qualities is the capacity 
of transposing one's own ideas into the idea of the people. Some- 
times we call that oratory, or public speaking. It may be oratory. 
It may not be oratory. Whatever it is, it is the possession of 
something inside, and the capacity to get it outside— into the other 
man's inside. We have orators who paint the skies in beautiful 
color. W^e have orators whose speeches sound like the roll of the 
organ. But when the colors disappear from the sky, and the roll 
of the organ has died out, nothing is left in the breast of the 
hearer except the sense of having been for the time being enter- 
tained. Lincoln was not such an orator. He had few s^races 



Address of Hon. Peter S. Crosseup 5 

of body. His voice was high pitched ; not at all sonorous. But 
he had the faculty of saying- something that stuck in the heart. 
He had in his own heart the ideal, and he had the artist's capacity 
of transferring that ideal into other hearts. 

I remember once of being in France, going to Barbizon, 
traveling along the highway, having forgotten almost where I 
was, by reason of the fact 1 had been in the carriage for a long 
while. All at once something appealed to me as belonging to me. 
I had never been there before ; but that hay-stack, that stable, 
that barn, that row of poplars — all these things someway or other 
were mine, and as familiar as childhood — like one of those in- 
tellectual mirages you sometimes experience when you see a thing 
for the first time, realizing you have seen it before, either in some 
other instance, or as a flash of the mind in advance. Turning to 
the driver I said, '"Where are we? "At that stone," said he, "jNIillet 
painted the 'Gleaners.' " There in the man's breast was the ideal 
of the Gleaners, and here he put it on canvas ; so that by merely 
reading the canvas the reality had become a reality to me who 
had never seen it before, — a familiar childhood reality, as familiar 
as the scenes about my childhood home. Lincoln had that faculty 
in oratory. He had no time to entertain. He had no time to 
please. He never told a story except for an eiTect. He was too 
serious, too earnest a man for that- — but he had something that 
he wanted to impress upon the public heart, and he had the 
faculty of doing it. 

Returning once from a meeting at Galesburg. that had been 
addressed by Baker of Springfield, and by Mr. Lincoln, two farm- 
ers fell into a conversation. Baker, you remember, was one of 
the great orators, afterwards in the Senate — appearing there on 
one occasion in the full uniform of a Major General, and deliver- 
ing one of the most captivating of speeches at the opening of the 
war ; then going straight out to battle where he laid down his life. 
These two men spoke, and the two farmers got to talking about it. 
Said one of the farmers to the other, "Was not that a splendid 
speech of Baker's? He held me just as long as he wished to hold 
me ; I could have stayed there until morning and listened to him." 
"Yes," said the other farmer, "it was a splendid speech ; but 
wasn't Old Abe a convincin' cuss ?" 

Lincoln had the faculty of speech that carries thought and 
speedy conviction ; and that it is that has made all his great State 
papers, and all his great speeches immortal. Take the speech at 
Gettysburg, written on an envelope on the way between Washing- 
ton and Gettysburg. At that time the great orator of the country 
was Edward Everett of Massachusetts. He was the orator of 
this occasion, dedicating this National Cemetery. Lincoln was 
there simply to grace the occasion as President of the United 
States. Everett delivered what was unquestionably a great ora- 



6 Address of Hon. I'cfcr S. Grosscup 

tion, running through an hour or an hour and a half of the 
people's time, and then Lincoln rose and read from his envelope 
the speech that has become the famous Gettysburg speech. Ever- 
ett's oration is lost. Nobody has ever read it. Lincoln's great 
speech, compressed within less than one-eighth of a column of a 
newspaper, is repeated every year at the decoration of the soldiers' 
graves ; is recited from every ]:)latform in every school house ; and 
r saw it at the University at Oxford, in the Library there, 
framed ; and when I said to the man who was conducting me 
tlu-ough, "Why have you framed this speech of Lincoln's, and 
Inmg it on the walls?" his answer was: "To illustrate what can 
be done in the English tongue." 

Here was a man who grew ui), out of the red soil ; who had 
never had nine months' education in his life ; who studied law 
on the wood-pile ; vvhose whole life was one of sacrifice ; not only 
the first president, not only the first statesman, not only the first 
figure in his country's history ; but rapidly, as the years go by, 
becoming the first orator of America ; the one to whom not only 
the American people but the nations of the world turn, as an ex- 
ample of what can be done in the tongue that his people speaks. 
Such was Lincoln, the Orator. 

Lincoln, the Statesman — the politician statesman — not a 
statesman who spent all his energies in saying things, and doing 
nothing ; in calling upon people to do things and then not organiz- 
ing them in any way that would efifectually bring about their 
doing; but a ])olitician statesman. I remember, when I was a boy, 
of watching a little old mill in my country town, at the side of my 
country town. The stream came down in the spring, turbulent 
and deep — a fully developed stream of water; and all summer 
long, a stream large enough for the boys to use for bathing and 
swimming, but apparently good for nothing else. But diverted 
from this stream, among the trees, and down between two hills, 
ran a little canal or race course ; and the water it carried was 
not much larger than the breadth of my body. But that water 
went over the wheel ; and in going over the wheel, it turned a 
mill ; and only after having turned the mill did it rejoin the 
stream below. Lincoln believed in the public opinion that goes 
over the wheel. He believed that public opinion, when rightly 
set upon its track, will overcome all obstacles. He believed that 
in the end, public opinion was bound to be right, and it is. But 
he believed in the public opinion, that diverted out of ordinary 
channels runs over the wdieels of politics — the public opinion 
that goes to primaries, the public opinion that expresses itself 
in elections, the public opinion that allies itself with organization, 
the public opinion that does something to put public opinion into 
effect. They called him Lincoln, the politician ; and he remained 
to the end of his days, Lincoln, the politician. But, in being Lin- 



Address of Hon. Fctcv S. Grosscup 9 

coin, the politician, he was Lincoln, the Statesman; for no man 
can lead the great arm} of citizenship unless he stays with the 
army; unless he knows the rank and file out of which it is con- 
structed : and when that army starts to cross the stream the 
leader must not be alread} on the other side of the stream; but 
on the same side, one step in advance, one step forward, wait- 
ing- there patiently, if necessary ; but waiting there until the 
column has come up. And thus it happened that Lincoln was 
often denounced for being too slow ; that people grew impatient 
with him for not taking .steps more rapidly in a direction that 
that far-seeing man knew eventually he would have to pursue. 
But he sat silently, no matter what they had to say, waiting for 
the people to come up ; waiting for public sentiment to come up ; 
getting public sentiment behind him before he took the next 
step forward. That was Lincoln, the Statesman ; Lincoln, the 
Politician. 

Then there was Lincoln the Man. It is hard to get an ade- 
(|uate conception of Lincoln, the Man. There are so many sides 
to the picture ; so many colors have been thrown in by those who 
knew him, and those who have described him, that what you 
might call a particular dominating quality is hard to catch. And 
yet, I believe that if you were to take it all apart, in search of 
that which dominates all else — that which gave to his character 
as a man more prominence and more efifectiveness than anything 
else — it would be found to be, iirst of all. his love of justice — 
his love of your having just the right in the world that he had: 
his love of the little man having just as much right as the great 
man, and the great man as much right as the little man; supple- 
mented by his belief that behind this justice was the great moral 
truth called God — the great personal IJeing in whose hands the 
universe swings. It was this love of justice — of justice emanat- 
ing from God — that dominated him clear through his splendid 
career. 

I rememl)er a friend of mine, Mr. Leonard Swett. telling me 
this very interesting incident. Mr. Swett was a practitioner here 
in Illinois whom Mr. Lincoln trusted as a friend. (Jne day Mr. 
Swett received a telegram saying, "Come to Washington imme- 
diately," signed by Mr. Lincoln. He took the first train, which 
at that time required that he should be two nights and a day on 
the road, arriving in Washington on the second morning. So 
urgent seemed the telegram that before going to a hotel to 
change his clothing or get breakfast, he went up to the White 
House, where he found Mr. Lincoln just finishing his toilet. He 
met him in the Cabinet room looking out over the Potomac ; 
down over the green sward ; down the glancing waters to the 
river ; down the river to where Mount Vernon looms up ; and 
the\- stood at the window for a moment, while Mr. Lincoln asked 



8 



Jddrcss of Hon. Peter S. Grosscnp 



about his Illinois friends, and about some other affairs that he 
was naturally interested in as a citizen of Illinois. Then Lin- 
coln turned and sat down at a cabinet, and pulled out a drawer, 
from which he took a letter (Mr. Swett meantime taking a chair 
by his side), saying, "Here's a letter I want to read to you." It 
turned out to be a letter from William Lloyd Garrison of Boston. 
It was right in the midst of that awful Civil War. Lincoln had 
just called for 600,000 troops, and there were evidences all over 

the north that the quotas would not be filled by volunteers that 

there^ would have to be drafting. Everywhere the spirit of dis- 
satisfaction and discontent and discouragement had grown up. 
Mr. Garrison, in his letter, referred to that fact, and said in sub- 
stance : You will never be able to fill this call ; the people are as 
wise as you, and the people know that whatever else you may 
say, or whatever else you politicians may think, the real cause for 
this war is slavery, and the real outcome must be the freedom of 
the slaves ; and until you in some way enroll yourself on the side 
of freedom, either by issuing an emancii)ation proclamation, or 
promising you will issue some such proclamation, the north is 
going to stand back discouraged and disheartened. Having read 
that letter, Lincoln laid it aside. "Now," he said. "Here is 
another." It turned out to be from Garrett Davis of Kentucky, 
who at that time was in the Senate from Kentucky, a border 
state union democrat; and the purport of that letter was this: 
You came to Washington saying that your purpose, and the pur- 
pose of the party behind you, was to restore the union. You 

have said all along that you liad no complaints against slavery 

that you proposed to let that institution alone in the states where 
that institution had become established. If you do that all is well. 
But if you do one thing, or .say one word, by which the people 
of the border states, Kentucky and Maryland, and Missouri, and 
Tennessee, that are now contributing as many soldiers to the 
union forces as to the confederate forces, lose confidence that 
what you have said was meant — if you say one word that leads 
them to think that you were not sincere in the beginning — that 
the purpose of this war, after all, is abolition— they will fall 
away from you ; and then, with the whole south on one side and 
a divided north on the other, the restoration of the union will 
become an impossible accomplishment. 

Having read that, he laid it aside, and took out another. It 
was from the President of the Swiss Federation of Cantons, a 
well-known man in public life in Europe at that time. This let- 
ter called Mr. Lincoln's attention to a report spread over Europe, 
that there was something to be done in the way of abolition of 
slavery ; that a proclamation was to be made up on that line, or 
something of that sort; and continued. "I want to call your' at- 
tention to a feature of this, that perhaps vou Americans have 



Address of Hon. Fcfer S. Grosscup 9 

not fully appreciated, and that is this : That while public England 
and public France and public Germany are on the side of the 
north, ofificial England and ofificial France, and official Germany 
are on the side of the south. Your only friend over here in 
official life is Russia. And England and France are simply 
waiting for a pretext upon which to make a move for interven- 
tion in behalf of the south." Such intervention, for instance, as we 
accomplished later in the war between Cuba and Spain. "Now," 
said this writer, "it has been the edict of international law from 
the Greeks and Romans that the turning of the slave against his 
master was barbarous and unlawful. We fear that an Emanci- 
pation, whether interpreted correctly or not by public England 
and public France, will be used by official England and France 
as a hint that the slave will take arms against his master, and 
will thus furnish the pretext upon which intervention will come." 
Then leaning back in his chair Lincoln went over the whole 
situation, pro and con, stating it better from Garrison's point 
of view than Garrison had stated it himself ; stating it from Davis' 
point of view better than Davis had stated it himself ; stating it 
better from the Swiss President's point of view better than 
the Swiss statesman had stated it himself — understanding it all 
to the end ; and having come to no further conclusion that Mr. 
Swett could make out, laid back the papers, and inquired when 
Swett was to return to Illinois ; and at that point the interview 
broke up. 

Why that interview? Because Mr. Lincoln had the habit 
that all just men have of testing his judgment before acting 
upon it. At that moment the Emancipation Proclamation was 
v.ritten and in one of the cabinet draw^ers. \\'ithin a few days 
it appeared. But before this intended step was actually taken— 
before this step that meant disaster or success ; possibly, disaster 
where one looked for success, and success where one looked for 
disaster — before the final seal was put upon that document Lin- 
coln wished to discuss it with another mind ; not to get the judg- 
ment of the other mind, but to clear up his own judgment; to 
satisfy himself, by putting once and for all his judgment into 
words before this friend of his youth and this friend of his man- 
hood. It w^as because he was a just man that he could do noth- 
ing when justice was not fully tested. lie could have sent out 
that Proclamation without this final scrutiny ; but he had, as a 
great many men before him have had, and as a great many men 
after him have had, that conscientiousness of judgment, that 
sense of responsibility to a higher Being for the responsibilities 
his fellow citizens had conferred on him, that made it impossible 
for him to act until he had exhausted every resource. And thi$ 
was the man, with these qualities, who "came forward at this 
critical period as the representative of the American nation. 



lo Address of Hon. Peter S. Grosscup 

Now, in ordinary historical review, we look upon slavery as 
the thing that caused the war ; and we look upon the emancipa- 
tion of the slave as the chief event of the w^ar. But I do not 
believe that that will be the final judgment of history. 

The slavery question, indeed, was a mere incident, a little 
thing on the great current, conspicuous it is true — so conspicuous 
that no one at the time saw anything else — but the great under- 
lying- thing at that time, the great thing as events afterwards dis- 
closed to us, was the grow'ing, the maturing, the bursting nation- 
ality of this people that the world calls the Americans. 

I remember when I was a boy, back in the Civil War, a little 
fellow with my brother playing in a hollow back of our house. 
I would sometimes hear a low rumbling along the horizon, and 
the inquiry would come to me : Is it thunder, or is it a railroad 
train away off at a distant town? And if thunder, there would 
be excited the most lively apprehensions. We regarded the light- 
ning, at that time, not as a friend of man, but as his enemy ; not 
as something mankind would make use of, but something man- 
kind must escape from, and dodge, and run away from. But 
since that time the lightning has become the friend of man. Its 
lights you utilize ; it moves your street cars ; it is beginning to 
move your railroad trains. Through it you call up your friend 
a thousand miles away, and his heart and yours beat as one. 
Under the sea it carries messages of life. It has bound us so 
closely together that Chicago and New York at the present time 
are as closely interwoven as New York and Brooklyn were in the 
fifties ; and San Francisco is as close to Chicago as Jersey City 
was to New York in the fifties. This whole teeming activity. 
American industry, American invention, American transporta- 
tion — everything that makes up American activity — was com- 
ing before the war to a crisis — a crisis that required that it 
should be met ; required that there should be built up among the 
people, that there should grow into the life of the people, a strong 
national sentiment. 

Then, too, the government required the spirit of nationality. 
The government as a government required it. We were coming 
to a time — we didn't see it then, but we see it now — when the 
central government had to have power that it never had before. 
The country's railroads then were little roads running from one 
town to another. Now, they are great trunk continental lines, 
that instead of remaining in the control of the State, had to come 
into the grasp of the wliole people. Government was coiupelled 
to expand. There had to be a growing nationality here as else- 
where. 

Then there was the necessity of a growing nationality in 
life, liberty and property. I do not mean the liberty of the slave, 
which is a mere incident, but the libertv of the man. without 



Address of Hon. Fctcr S. Grosscup ii 

which Hfe is worth nothin^^; without wliich propertv is worth 
nothing — the hbert}- of the individual man. 

A few years ago I was up in the Lake Superior country. 
One night, after my fellows had all gone to their tents, I took 
the boat, and cutting loose from the party, drifted out into the 
Great Lake, drifting further and further until even the lights 
disappeared, and I was out there all alone. 

I looked up, and abcn-e me were the splendid constellations, 
fleets of ships sailing into ports I knew not where ; but sailing 
under a guidance that has been so accurate, that in all history 
no clash has ever been reported. I looked below me, the water 
was placid as a mirror, so that the constellations were reflected 
in the water below. When I looked up, I was looking into the 
depths of a fathomless universe, tilled with the moving ships of 
God's fleets, and when I looked down I was looking again into 
the fathomless depths of the same universe. And for the moment 
I trembled not. 1, a little fisherman, was in the center of the 
great sphere; and for a moment I felt, as every one would feel, 
the inconsequence c(jmi)ared with all this of a single life, of an 
individual life, of the life of a man clothed in this kind of clay. 
But then I remembered that it was a man like myself, who had 
marked out the orbits of these fleets, who had charted their ways, 
and who for a thousand years to come can tell where they will be 
when that thousand years has passed ; and I remembered, too. 
that it was my own eyes, these lens ])ut into my own face, acting 
as glasses for something behind them, that caught into vision 
these fleets thousands of millions of miles away; and then I re- 
flected, that in my own heart was the photographic process that 
mirrored them — mirrored their sublimity, their greatness on the 
human soul ; and then I said : After all, the little lone fisherman 
in the center of this universe, is not out of place. It belongs to 
him ; the universe belongs to man ; God made it for man ; made 
it for the individual man. And it is on a conception like that 
that we get some conception of what indrvidual liberty means, 
and what the right of individual conscience is, without which all 
other things are worthless ; because, in the end, except for the 
existence of human souls, this whole universe could be crushed 
into dust, thrown away, and nothing would have been lost. (Ap- 
plause.) Individual liberty; the right of individual life; in- 
dividual labor, and individual property — these are the things for 
which all the battles of civilization have been fought. The in- 
dividual against his fellows; the single man against everybody 
else; the right of the individual man to his life — it is that that 
constitutes the trophy, the crowning success of civilization. 

Perhaps the greatest lasting thing that the civil war did was 
to nationalize Life, Liberty and Property. Before the fourteenth 
amendment to the federal constitution, life, liberty, and property 



12 Address of Hon. Peter S. Grosscup 

were within the power of the eight and thirty states. By that 
amendment they were put within the protecting shield of the 
nation. Henceforth the right to hfe. the right to Hberty, and the 
right to property, were national interests. When we look across 
the Atlantic to what is transpiring in France to-day, in relation 
to the church properties created by the Catholics of France, the 
value of this, our great national guaranty against absolutism 
and spoliation, stands out one of the mighty bulwarks of Ameri- 
can institutions. 

What is happening in France? The Catholics of France 
through centuries built the churches of France, splendid, noble, 
beautiful edifices. I never go there that I am not more impressed 
with what man has built in his reverence of God than for any- 
thing that he has put up in honor of men — the beautiful Made- 
laine, a bride's face looking out through the bridal veil — the splen- 
did Notre Dame. Will I ever forget an afternoon that I hap- 
pened into Notre Dame when the funeral of an Archbishop or 
Cardinal or one of the high officials of the Catholic Church was 
in its midst ; when the great organ at one end of the Cathedral 
and the great organ at the other were throwing back and forward 
the strains of their lamentations, broken in now and then with 
the chimes from the dome ; a symphony so sublime that I felt 
that great as the dead's life had been in the world it must be 
immensely greater in the atmosphere in which it was caught up 
and was being translated heavenwards. (Applause.) 

For centuries the Catholics of France had been building their 
churches and their other institutions. Like the little Lutheran 
church building in which I was confirmed — like the Protestant 
cliurcli buildings to which the majority of Americans are attached 
—these edifices became, humanly speaking, the property of their 
human creators. By every law of nature and of right they should 
have remained the property of their creators. But in the frenzy 
of the revolution of 1789 they w^ere seized by the mob; and 
because the mob at that time was the government of France, what 
had been built by religion was confiscated to the state. No his- 
torian of standing, no jurist of standing has ever attempted, on 
any principle of honor or morals, to defend this act. It was an 
act of sheer brute force — the taking by sheer force, and without 
compensation, of things created from their creators, and turning 
them over to the state. No socialist of the most radical type has 
ever outstripped in speech what the mob of the revolution accom- 
plished in deed. 

For twelve years the situation thus stood — the forcible reten- 
tion by the state of that which did not belong to the state. Then 
Napoleon, alive to the fact that a religion in France w^as needed 
as well as French armies, and that the weakness of his govern- 
ment in the eye of the world was the spoliation on which it was 



Address of Hon. Pcfcr S. Grosscup 13 

founded, set about to undo the wrong. The Concordat of 1801 
was the result. The Concordat was a compromise. It did not 
restore to the CathoHcs of France the property that belonged to 
them ; rightful as such restoration would have been, it probably 
was beyond the power of Napoleon to accomplish. But what was 
accepted as an equivalent was agreed upon— the assumption by 
the state of a part of the burdens of the church. And as a con- 
tract to that end the Concordat has stood now for over a hundred 
years. 

It is from this settlement — this contract between the authori- 
ties of the state and the authorities of the church that has stood 
for a century — that the state now withdraws ; withdraws, too, 
without a pretense of restoring to the other party the right of 
property that the contract that is abrogated was intended to re- 
place. A witlidrawal under such circumstances is nothing less 
than repudiation. True, as some of the apologists for the act of 
separation say, the Concordat by its terms was not perpetual ; but 
assuming that that fact gives to the state the right of withdrawal, 
it does not excuse the duty, when the supposed right of with- 
drawal is exercised, of at least restoring that for which the con- 
tract was intended as the eciuivalent. Could the state the next 
day after the contract was signed, or a year thereafter, or ten 
years thereafter, still keeping its grasp on the property taken, 
have withdrawn without guilt of repudiation? \Vhy then in ten 
times ten years ? For it is not the lapse of time, however long, 
that gives the right to withdraw. The sole basis of that right, 
whenever exercised, would be the restoration to the party of 
what had been originally taken — what we call in law the restora- 
tion of the statu quo. 

True. too. as the apologists say, the state has had now the 
legal title to these properties for a century. But by what code 
of morals or justice does the possession of title for a period, how- 
ever long, accompanied by a burden settled upon it as a part of 
the consideration upon which the title was surrendered, entitle 
the party to throw ofif at will the burden while holding fast to the 
title? Besides, there is no principle, either in morals or in public 
law, that makes that right which originally was wrong. X^o plea 
of that character can stand for an instant in the court of public 
conscience. 

But again it is said that the repeal of the Concordat is only 
putting into effect in France the principle of separation between 
church and state that prevails in America. But what is there in 
the American principle that deprives the church of the right to 
hold the property that the church has from time to time, or that 
justifies the taking by the public of that property without full com- 
pensation for the thing taken ? Indeed, the American principle 
contemplates that the churches shall hold their own property, to 



14 Address of Hon. Peter S. Grosseup 

l)e used according- to their own interpretations of their rehgious 
duties ; and it prohibits the state, by the solemnity of constitu- 
tional guaranties, from taking any property, either church or 
secular, except upon full compensation first made. 

As a final apology it is said, that the act of separation still 
preserves to the people who reside in the vicinity of the individual 
churches taken, the continued enjoyment of such churches as 
houses of worship — that all that these several communities have 
to do is to apply to the state for permission to use the church 
buildings, whereupon permission will be granted, as a matter of 
course, without charge. lUit do the people who ofifer this argu- 
ment realize that under the P>ench law, as it now stands, three, 
five, a score of associations may be formed in the specific com- 
munity surrounding the church edifice asked for — Catholic. He- 
brew, Methodist, Mohammedan — whereupon each will be entitled 
to the use of the edifice, transforming it thus from a place conse- 
crated to some concrete faith, into a sort of town hall, where every 
character of faith will be housed. What would the Methodists, 
or the Lutlierans, or the Jews, each perfectly tolerant of the Cath- 
olic church as an organ of religion, think of it if our government 
were to compel them to stretch that toleration to the extent of 
dividing with that church the rights in the church edifices erected 
with their own hands and dedicated to their own faith ? Resides, 
what assurances have the Catholics of France that a public that 
will seize, without right, wdiat belongs to another, and withdrawing 
without right from the arrangement under which that seizure for 
a century was condoned, will observe any later or less substantial 
promises that it will make? What assurance have the Catholics 
of France that step by step, as it is now going on. this process of 
elimination will not result in the end in the total elimination of 
the Catholic faith from the properties that their ancestors have 
created ? 

Indeed every attempt at justifying these acts of the French 
government dissolves the moment it is ])ut under the lens of any 
honest application of the axioms of law or morals — dissolves in- 
stantly one applies to it that highest test of fair judgment, "Have 
you done unto others what you would have them do unto you?"' 
And it is then that the defender of the French government falls 
back upon the assertion, that after all, the Concordat was not a 
settlement, but was merely an arrangement for governmental vol- 
untary contributions to the church — contributions that the state 
may continue or discontinue at will. But argument like that is 
bad as its predecessors, for it tries to make us believe that an 
untruth is the truth. The seizure of the churches at the begin- 
ning of the revolution, and the Concordat at the end. are not sep- 
arate items in French history, unrelated to each other. On the 
other hand, thev are two events closelv related, standing to each 



Address of Hon. Peter S. Grosseup 15 

other in the relation of cause and effect ; for without the unlawful 
seizures the Concordat would never have been brovight into exist- 
ence, and without the Concordat the church would eventually 
have found some other way to retrieve the wrong done. Napol- 
eon was not making" a contribution. He was righting the wrong. 
He needed the church to help govern France, and the Concordat 
was his token that the church was not to be despoiled. He 
needed to show the world that he was not for overturning the 
well established institutions of mankind ; justice to the church that 
had been robbed was the best evidence of his good faith. In every 
honest view of history it was a settlement that these parties 
entered upon in 1801, not a surrender — a settlement that had the 
intended oft'er of forestalling the church from appealing on that 
day, or at some later day, to the conscience of P>ance for the 
justice that the conscience of France was bound some day to do. 

It is not as a Catholic, therefore, or a Protestant speaking 
to Catholics, that I chose to raise my voice, for whatever my voice 
is worth, against this invasion of the rights of the church ; nor as 
a Protestant merely interested in seeing that the great sister 
church is not despoiled. I speak as a Protestant, and in the inter- 
est of Protestants ; because if such things could be done outside 
of France, the great Protestant church to which I belong, secure 
now in the enjoyment of the property it has created, as the human 
instrument through which it is working out its faith, would be no 
longer secure. I speak, too, as an American, who though irrev- 
ocably opposed to a church controlled state, is as irrev- 
ocably opposed to a state controlled religion. I speak as a man 
to whom breach of faith is none the less odious because it may 
emerge from high altitudes. And I speak as a believer, who sees 
in what is transpiring in France an organized movement against 
belief in Ciod after any faith. 

I speak, too, as a liberty loving American, who stands in favor 
of individual liberty. When the situation in France is clearly 
understood by the American people, there will be no apologies for 
that act of vandalism that can stand. Republican America will 
be against it ; Protestant America will be against it ; liberty loving 
America will be against it ; all the forces that have made us great 
will be against it ; everything that has made this nation what it is 
will be against it. Lincoln and Washington, looking down from 
the upper skies, would raise their voices against it. 

It was in behalf of life, liberty and property, as well as of the 
liberty of the slave, and the liberty of the commonwealth that 
Lincoln fought his great fight ; and when I think of him tonight, 
as rested on God for his support, there comes into my heart the 
hopefulness and the benediction that is the salvation of mankind. 

I am a believer. But like all human beings, there have come 
to me davs of doubt — davs when the lights were not as brijrht as 



i6 Address of Hon. Peter S. Grossaip 

on other days ; when the candles were burning down. I have 
looked sometimes to^fclie eastward, out of which my lite came 
up along with the sun, and though I knew beyond the fog that 
marked the beginning of my life, thirty, forty or fifty years ago, 
all the past lay it was not a past that seemed to be my past. My 
individual past ran back only to the fog. And when I looked 
toward the west where my life will eventually set. there again, 
ten, fifteen or twenty years from now, another fog arose. I 
knew, of course, that beyond that fog was all the future — a 
mighty future — but was not the fog the end of my personal exist- 
ence? Alas, my life! It began in a fog; it ends in a fog. lUit 
then, lifting my eyes over the fog in the east, away in the further- 
most corners of the universe, I see the constellations ; and lifting 
my eyes over this fog in the west, away in the uttermost corners 
of the universe, I see again other constellations ; and between 
them the millions of constellations, held together by a divine law, 
that makes them move as though they were ships on the seas ; and 
I know that my life does not begin with the fog and that it does 
not end with the fog; that my life begins with the furthest constel- 
lation, and ends not until the end of time is reached ; that I am a 
part of this great universe; and that whether I live a little part 
or a great part, a higher part or a deeper part, what I am doing 
has been commissioned to mc from the throne of the universe. 
And under such a faith I. live without fear that in some way all 
things will come out right. They will come out right in France. 
The revolution against the throne of Louis XVI. succeeded ; rev- 
olutions against other human thrones have succeeded. But there 
never will come a time when a revolution against the throne of 
God can have success. (Applause, loud and long continued.) 



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